Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Jewish Problems

arxiv.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 74 posts

Re: Jewish Problems

#41

Post by ucee054 »

davidkatz wrote: post #35
ucee054 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You weren't talking about those who were discriminated against in Russia, you were talking about jews who were discriminated against in Russia. Implying that all the others who were discriminated against don't count . And there were lots of them . Including, by these articles, victimized by MGU admissions. EDIT: check out in the article where it says "These problems were designed to prevent Jewish people and other un…

Unnecessary bashing. The OP singled Jews out, which framed this discussion mostly around Jews. Prejudice against Jews is called anti semitism. There's really nothing to see here, nobody implied that there was no discrimination against other groups.

Well in the first place framing this discussion mostly around jews is precisely the problem. Don't you understand why it is offensive?

The same way it's offensive when my jewish relatives claim the Nazi genocide was the worst catastrophe in all history, conveniently forgetting the Cultural Revolution, the Cambodian Killing Fields, the Armenian Genocide etc etc

So I don't like the use of the word "anti-semitism" in the first place. But what really annoys me is that it is a euphemism, and a hyped one at that. To a first approximation, anti-semite means Nazi. Prejudice against jews is correctly called judeophobia instead.

shmerl managed both to commit this abuse of language and complain about the use of stupid euphemisms at the same time.

And what he was complaining about - affirmative action to mean discrimination - is a far smaller abuse of language.

Re: Jewish Problems

#42

Post by rdl »

rayiner wrote: post #19
dobro wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Hitler was inspired by the american concentration camps for native americans to build his own concentration camps for Jews: “Hitler’s concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the wild west; and often praised to his inner circl…

The US's extermination of American Indians was brilliant and cunning. If you study the historical record, one thing you become aware of is that the colonists didn't originally have the advantage. They had guns, but that wasn't so much of an edge that the Indians couldn't have wiped out the colonists with their superior numbers. Even at the time of the American Revolution, you see treaties with the Delaware Indians th…

What happened, from what I've read, is that initial contact put enough European disease into the population that the population and society collapsed; it was thus much easier for Europeans settling here to win.

The Amazon was, allegedly, basically a garden at one point -- the natives the Spanish eventually encountered were just broken remains of a much larger civilization which had been successful and then disappeared.

http://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Colum...

Re: Jewish Problems

#43

Post by goldfeld »

jonnathanson wrote: post #13
DaniFong wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Affirmative action? Are you mad? Perhaps you're unaware of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Jewish_pogroms_in_the_Russ... Affirmative action is not the same thing as making it artificially harder for a discriminated minority!

I think what he was trying to say is that this is affirmative action for gentiles . In other words, Russia made it easier for non-Jews by virtue of giving them easier entrance exams. I still think "affirmative action" is a clumsy and not entirely correct way of describing what he's trying to articulate. But he's not trying to be as provocative as he comes across. At least I don't think (?) he is?

Just because you have a name for non-Jews doesn't make it a cohesive group and most importantly nowhere near a minority.

It's insane to say discriminating against a minority is like affirmative action for everyone else. So if I don't like Bob I could phrase it that it's not that I don't like him--I do!-- it's just that I like everyone else better (including other people I dislike). And for someone to fall for that would be ridiculous.

Re: Jewish Problems

#44

Post by pandaman »

jvm wrote: post #40
mynameishere wrote: post #9

It's just affirmative action. This sort of thing happens in every multicultural country, especially when one group apparently does better financially than the others. http://www.amazon.com/Affirmative-Action-Around-World-Empiri... The Russians came up with an unusually crass method for this, but guess what? Jews and other whites and East Asians all are, to some degree, kept from elite institutions today because of ou…

I can't believe this troll comment is the top comment. > Our team of the best eight Soviet students, during the month we had the problems, solved only half of them. Those questions weren't hard. They were impossible. The point was simply to not allow any undesirables to pass. Higher standards for Asians might be bullshit but it's not the same as literally keeping all Asians out regardless of skill.

The entrance math exam in MSU is not pass/fail but graded. There are two math exams (at least in the "math department", I imagine she meant either Mech-Mat or VMK), written and oral. Written exam consists of 6 problems with the passing mark 3 and maximum 5 (you only need to solve 5 correctly, 5th and 6th problems are the hardest and usually allow a choice between an algebra and a geometry problem, giving the time limit it's hard to solve both). Oral test is administered by drawing a random "ticket" with two general questions from the school program (e.g. "What are properties of a triangle?") and the problems the person conducting the test can choose based on the answers and the result of the written test. Answering two "ticket" questions correctly gives you the passing grade (3) already. So there is no way anybody could be failed by any number of the problems given during the oral test if they managed to answer the "ticket". At the worst case one could be dropped to 3 at the oral test, giving total of 8 for the both math tests and that's a pretty good mark. Total test score of 13 (you need to get 5 for the third marked test, written Physics and pass unmarked written Russian) is guaranteed admission. 12 - is a good chance of admission and, depending on the year, even 11 can get you in.

However there is a shortcut - under some conditions (either being a subject of one of Soviet "AA" incentives or being a winner of a math Olympiad), 4 or 5 for the first test (written math) gives automatic admission. 9 for the both math tests is also automatic and unconditional admission.

So the way the hard questions in the oral test come up is usually when you get 4 for the written test. If you could not solve 5th or 6th problem in the written test you are at the average level and giving you 5 (and automatically admitting you) in the oral test would defeat the whole purpose of the shortcut rule to secure admission for the exceptional students. So you have to get 4 or, really, 3 and such a question is to ensure that.

I don't know about anti-semitism, maybe there was some yet I have seen plenty of Jews both among students and faculty so, evidentially, they have not been entirely kept out. Yet I have seen a lot of people (of all origins) complaining about entrance exam being "too hard" and them being persecuted for various reasons. The reality is that pretty much every year from 70s to late 90s there had been several candidates for each student place so some people had to fail the test.

Re: Jewish Problems

#45

Post by dobro »

rayiner wrote: post #23
dobro wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly as you described it. I had the privilege to discuss the issue with the late Russell Means ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Means ) a few years ago. What's disgusting is that the abuse continues to this very day. First they were decimated, then they were forced into "reformation camps" to break their spirit, and then casino licenses and the like were thrown to them as a bone (and to corrupt and silence t…

Have you seen this movie re: uranium mining on Navajo land? http://navajoboy.com/ I met one of the creators of the movie in Chicago. One of the guys behind it, Jeff Spitz, is a very articulate advocate and has been following this story since 2000. His group followed up the movie with webisodes to update the story and use the movie to put pressure on the EPA.

No, looks interesting, I'll check it out.

Thanks.

Re: Jewish Problems

#46

Post by taejo »

goldfeld wrote: post #43
jonnathanson wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what he was trying to say is that this is affirmative action for gentiles . In other words, Russia made it easier for non-Jews by virtue of giving them easier entrance exams. I still think "affirmative action" is a clumsy and not entirely correct way of describing what he's trying to articulate. But he's not trying to be as provocative as he comes across. At least I don't think (?) he is?

Just because you have a name for non-Jews doesn't make it a cohesive group and most importantly nowhere near a minority. It's insane to say discriminating against a minority is like affirmative action for everyone else. So if I don't like Bob I could phrase it that it's not that I don't like him--I do!-- it's just that I like everyone else better (including other people I dislike). And for someone to fall for that wo…

> most importantly nowhere near a minority.

Affirmative action is not just for minorities... in some (many?) places, the historically excluded group form a majority.

Re: Jewish Problems

#47

Post by ibotty »

continuations wrote: post #37
DaniFong wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Affirmative action? Are you mad? Perhaps you're unaware of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Jewish_pogroms_in_the_Russ... Affirmative action is not the same thing as making it artificially harder for a discriminated minority!

It is exactly like affirmative action: http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2011/04... "Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade and researcher Alexandria Walton Radford examined data on students applying to college in 1997 and found what looks like different standards for different racial groups. They calculated that Asian-Americans needed nearly perfect SAT scores of 1550 to have the same chance of b…

please have a look at the history of antisemitism in europe. you cannot compare things which are not comparable at all.

Re: Jewish Problems

#48

Post by [deleted] »

ibotty wrote: post #47
continuations wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is exactly like affirmative action: http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2011/04... "Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade and researcher Alexandria Walton Radford examined data on students applying to college in 1997 and found what looks like different standards for different racial groups. They calculated that Asian-Americans needed nearly perfect SAT scores of 1550 to have the same chance of b…

please have a look at the history of antisemitism in europe. you cannot compare things which are not comparable at all.

[deleted]

Re: Jewish Problems

#49

Post by continuations »

ibotty wrote: post #47
continuations wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is exactly like affirmative action: http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2011/04... "Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade and researcher Alexandria Walton Radford examined data on students applying to college in 1997 and found what looks like different standards for different racial groups. They calculated that Asian-Americans needed nearly perfect SAT scores of 1550 to have the same chance of b…

please have a look at the history of antisemitism in europe. you cannot compare things which are not comparable at all.

Or you could take a look at the long history of anti-Asian racism in America (Chinese massacre of 1871, imported Asian slave labors for building the transcontinental railroads, Chinese Exclusion Act, Asiatic Barred Zone Act, etc). Just because you want to claim they are not comparable doesn't mean they are not.

Re: Jewish Problems

#50

Post by charlesjshort »

Jews invented racial discrimination. Let a gentile apply to a Jewish school, even if his father is Jewish and he practices Judaism they will turn him down if his mother is not ethnically Jewish.
Post reply on HN